Program aimed at polar preservation

Polar bears are perfectly suited to life in the Arctic: Their fur blends in with the snow; their
heavy, strongly curved claws allow them to climb over blocks of ice and snow and grip their prey
securely; and the rough pads on their feet keep them from slipping.

The one thing they cannot survive is the loss of the ice, and the changes in worldwide climate
threaten to melt the summer sea ice on which they hunt. Scientists say two-thirds of the world’s
polar bears could disappear by about 2050.

So a group of American zoo and aquarium officials are asking the federal government to let them
import orphaned bear cubs from Canada, so that some can be bred in captivity. Zoos have helped save
endangered species before, such as the California condor and the Mexican wolf, which were bred in
zoos and then set free into the wild.

“If you don’t build these insurance populations when you have the animals, then it’s too late,”
said the Toledo (Ohio) Zoo’s mammals curator Randi Meyerson, chairman of the Association of Zoos
and Aquariums’ polar bear species survival program. “We’re planning for something we hope we don’t
need.”

Today 64 captive polar bears live in accredited institutions such as the Maryland Zoo in
Baltimore, which has three. The National Zoo in Washington had 13 polar bears between 1959 and
1980, but it no longer has any and has no plans to try to get one because the bears are so
expensive to care for.

Right now, polar bears cannot be imported into the United States for public display under
federal law. Robert Gabel, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s international affairs program,
said that in order to bring bears into U.S. zoos, “we’d have to show that an import would either
stabilize or increase the wild population of polar bears. It’s difficult to show how an import
would accomplish that.”

Lily Peacock, a research biologist in the U.S. Geological Survey’s polar bear program, said the
best way to help this threatened species is by cutting the heat-trapping gases that come from cars
and trucks and burning coal to generate electricity.

“If the world cares about polar bears, reducing carbon concentrations in the atmosphere is the
only way to preserve polar bears’ habitat,” she said.

Even backers of the zoo plan say that reducing carbon emissions is the top priority for saving
polar bears.

Robert Buchanan, president of Polar Bears International, a Montana- and Manitoba-based group
that works to help the animals, said displaying them in zoos could represent the best way to
persuade the public to make such cuts.

“The only way at this time to save bears is to have people change their habits, and the way to
do that is through zoos and aquariums,” he said. “Polar bears are just ambassadors for their
friends in the Arctic.”